


it's a shot in the dark aimed right at my throat

by blackkat



Series: Role Swap AUs [2]
Category: Bleach
Genre: Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Arrancar Kurosaki Ichigo, Developing Relationship, Drama, Family, M/M, Substitute Shinigami Coyote Starrk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-28
Updated: 2019-09-28
Packaged: 2020-10-29 22:57:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20804372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackkat/pseuds/blackkat
Summary: Starrk has one half-instant to see the air ripple before the pressure hits.





	it's a shot in the dark aimed right at my throat

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt: i don't know if u're still taking prompts but StarrIchi Role Swap with Starrk as the Substitute Shinigami (protecting his little sister Lilynette) and Ichigo as the super powerful Arrancar who kills anyone that gets near him due to his spiritual pressure and splits himself in pieces so he won't be alone (Karin and Yuzu)? (i'm sorry i ship it and it sounds so cute)

Starrk has one half-instant to see the air ripple before the pressure hits.

For one splintered second, he thinks it’s a physical blow. Staggers, steps back only to realize it’s nothing but _power_, the leading edge of a hurricane compressed into form. It practically knocks him from his feet, and he staggers back upright just as a flicker of sonido puts the source right between him and Ulquiorra.

“Ichigo,” Ulquiorra says coolly, but Lilynette yelps and struggles as his grip tightens, and Starrk's heart turns over in his chest.

He lifts a gun, leveled right at Ulquiorra’s face, and says quietly, “Let her go.”

Ulquiorra barely spares a glance for him. All of his attention is on the Espada, tall, with a mane of orange hair and twisted horns rising from his head. For a long moment, the man is silent, studying Ulquiorra, and then he turns his head. Looks at Starrk, and the weight of his attention is like an impact just as much as his reiatsu. Starrk's breath catches, but he sets his feet and weathers it, lets his own reiatsu surge to meet it. for a moment the clash of power is almost visible, the ghostly blue-white of Starrk's raging against red-edged black, and—

Lilynette cries out, high, hurt, and suddenly Starrk's reiatsu has _teeth_.

In an instant he’s across the sand, a shot almost taking off the horn on Ulquiorra’s helmet-mask. Ulquiorra jerks his head to the side just in time, lashes out, and Starrk knocks his open-handed blow aside, slams a knee up, grabs for his sister as Lilynette tears out of Ulquiorra’s grip.

His fingers just skim the cloth of her jacket as two small forms whisk her away.

With a snarl of rage, Starrk spins. Two Arrancar girls, just about Lilynette’s age, are holding her between them. One is dark-haired and scowling, the other blonde and smiling, but they're not wavering.

“Ichi-nii?” the blonde girl asks.

Ichigo flicks a glance at them, then at Starrk. “Aizen-sama wants her,” he says, and Starrk tenses as Lilynette’s eye goes wide. She’s not one to show fear, but Aizen has already had her for days, and Starrk lets his power rise, rage, _crest_.

In his head, the Hollow he’s spent so long trying to control is howling, a wolf ready to tear out his throat, but this is too important for fear.

“No,” he says coldly, deliberately, and those brown eyes slide back to him. Pause there, and—

“Ichigo,” Ulquiorra says warningly, taking two steps forward. “Aizen-sama requires—”

“Karin,” Ichigo says, and the dark-haired Fracción _grins_. In a blur, she leaps away from Lilynette, grabbing something small out of her sleeve. Ulquiorra jerks around, turning to meet her, but her vicious expression doesn’t falter as he lifts a hand. She drops, slides beneath the stabbing blow, rises—

Shoves the little cube into the Hollow hole in Ulquiorra’s chest, and leaps back.

Ulquiorra’s eyes go wide, but it’s already too late. There’s a burst of black-tinged light, with Ulquiorra at the center, and when they clear, he’s gone.

Starrk stares, frozen. The Espada he’s been training to fight this whole time, the strongest of Aizen’s Arrancar that he’s met, just—gone.

Of course, that leaves Ichigo, whose _Fracción_ just got rid of Ulquiorra. Who’s watching Starrk narrowly, assessing, as the wind swirls the sand around his feet.

“Thanks, Karin,” he says, and the girl snorts.

“Next time pick a harder target, Ichi-nii,” she tells him, and flickers back over in a single flash-step to take Lilynette’s arm again.

Ichigo doesn’t smile, but something like amusement touches his face for an instant. “Take her to Aizen—” he starts.

“_No_,” Starrk says, just as Lilynette’s voice rises in protest. He takes two steps across the sand, and bankai is an instant away, the power curled and waiting. He’s been training for Ulquiorra, but—well. One overpowered ass is just as good as any other, especially if they're standing between him and Lilynette. He lifts a gun, lets the ball of spiritual pressure spin to life and _burn_, and levels it right at Ichigo's face. “I won't let you take my sister,” he tells Ichigo, low, almost lazy, but means it as nothing less than an outright threat.

Ichigo eyes him, steady and crushing, and then frowns just a little. “It’s better to get her away from my reiatsu,” he says. “Not many things survive it.”

“I'm _fine_,” Lilynette says loudly, fiercely, and wrenches at the girls holding her. “All I want is Starrk! Let me go!”

The blond Fracción hesitates, looking from her to Starrk, and bites her lip, but Karin snorts. “No, Yuzu,” she says firmly. “He’s Aizen-sama’s enemy.”

“He’s my _brother_,” Lilynette snarls, and kicks at them, jerks, fights because she’s always been a fighter, always been the stronger of them. Where Starrk gives up, Lilynette forges ahead no matter the circumstances. “He’s an idiot and useless and lazy and he _needs_ me!”

Starrk sighs. “Lilynette,” he says in complaint, though he doesn’t let the pistol leveled at Ichigo's head waver.

“It’s _true_!” Lilynette tells him. “Shut up and accept it, Starrk!”

Starrk will never tell her that he does. That he always has, right from the first.

“Give her to me and I’ll get her away from you,” Starrk tells Ichigo, unwilling to budge. “All I want is my sister.”

Ichigo studies him for a long moment. “You became a Substitute Shinigami to save her,” he says.

Starrk doesn’t ask how he knows; Aizen is nothing if not a creep. “I’d do it over again,” he says simply, and Ichigo inclines his head, just slightly.

“I have orders,” he says, not an apology, and looks at his Fracción. “Yuzu, Karin, take her to a safe distance.”

“Sure, Ichi-nii!” Yuzu says, something like relief in her smile, and they vanish in a blur. Starrk growls, takes a step after them—

Lunges back, half an instant before the black blade of a sword almost takes his head off.

“All of your friends are fighting right now,” Ichigo says, and the wind curls his long hair around him as he advances, the sun turning it to flame. “There are no allies to come to your rescue.”

“I can manage one fight on my own,” Starrk retorts, and takes a shot. Ichigo slides around it, almost too fast to see, and Starrk has to hurl himself up into the air to avoid a Cero that burns across the sand and just skims his toes. Drops, lets a burning blast of reiatsu catch Ichigo right in the chest, and blocks the stroke of a sword with the barrel of his gun.

“Alone?” Ichigo asks, and his eyes are dark, his reiatsu even darker. It lashes like a sea, tearing trenches in the desert, and Starrk recoils to avoid it, has to call up his own reiatsu so it won't eat away at him. “Your loyalty to your friends doesn’t seem worth what they're risking for you.”

Starrk thinks of Rukia, of Renji, of Byakuya appearing out of the darkness of a garganta ready to fight for him. braces his feet, breathing in, and smiles, thin and steady.

“I’d do this for any one of them,” he says, simple. True. He already invaded Soul Society once for Rukia, and he regrets nothing about it except not being able to cave Aizen’s face in while he was there. “And they’d do the same for me.”

Ichigo's expression tightens, just faintly, and his mouth pulls down. Between the points of curved horns, a Cero builds, black and burning, and Starrk throws himself down, rolls, rises as it passes, and takes three quick shots.

Strikes true, and sends Ichigo staggering back, only to watch the wound bubble and close and smooth over like it never existed.

“Your shikai won't be nearly enough to hurt me,” Ichigo says, and for the first time a flicker of something intent rises. He raises a hand, twisting his black sword around, and raises it before him. “Show me your bankai, Starrk. If you can stop me, I’ll return your sister to you.”

Starrk's grip on his weapons tightens. It’s too good a deal to be anything close to the truth, but— “What if you just give her back to me and we pretend we had a massive fight,” he says wearily, because this is a pain. Too much posturing, too much _effort_, and if Lilynette wasn’t on the line, if she wouldn’t kick his ass from here to the Rukongai—

Ichigo raises a brow at him, and a Cero whirls into being.

With a curse, Starrk throws himself back, a shot redirecting the blast just enough not to toast him. At the sound of a step, he spins, only to find himself face to face with another Cero, too big, too close to dodge—

“Bankai,” he bites out. “Los Lobos!”

Blue-white light crashes down like a tidal wave, scattering the Cero into nothing, and Starrk rises from the center of it, watching the shards of flame twist, reform. His wolves take shape, curling around his feet like sparks, and Starrk reaches up, pulls. Twin swords made of the same blue fire burn into being in his hands, and he faces Ichigo across the cratered sand.

Slowly, deliberately, Ichigo grips one of the gloves he’s wearing, pulls it off in a simple motion, and Starrk can feel his breath catch.

The black one tattooed there feels like a threat, and Starrk raises his head to meet Ichigo's eyes, caught halfway between a flicker of unfamiliar fear and grim determination.

“Oh,” he says, a little unsteadily.

Ichigo's eyes flicker down to the wolves, then back up. “You don’t fight alone,” he says, testing, and Starrk holds his gaze. Thinks of those two Fracción, of Ichigo's words about his friends, about loyalty, and draws in a breath.

“You don’t have to, either,” he says. It’s an offer, an out. Ichigo has already shown more care for Lilynette than Ulquiorra has ever bothered with, and—

There's a distance in his eyes. Something cold that isn't cold by choice, and Starrk _knows_ loneliness, felt it in the years before Lilynette was born, in the aftermath of his mother’s death. Hates it, detests it, and if Ichigo feels the same thing—

Ichigo takes a breath that shakes like a laugh, half-smothered. Looks at him, steady, set, but there’s a wry edge to it, too.

“All I wanted was enough power to protect those around me,” Ichigo says. “And allies strong enough not to break.”

Starrk wonders if he found that, with the Espada. It doesn’t seem like he did; he’s here alone, and Ulquiorra hardly seemed welcoming. “I won't break,” Starrk says. Promises, maybe; he can feel the twist of the words in his own chest, the sudden attention of the Hollow. Raises a hand, fingers catching on bare bone out of nothingness, and drags the mask down over his face.

Ichigo's mouth curves in a smirk, and he lifts his black blade. “Maybe you won't,” he says, but not like he believes it.

Starrk closes his eyes, wraps himself in power as the Hollow laughs, and proves him wrong.

(When the sand is burned to glass, when the air is full of smoke, when Starrk is bleeding but on his feet and the figure of his enemy is slumped, panting, on the ground, Starrk offers him a hand.

Ichigo looks up at him, dark eyes, dangerous, one horn broken and his sword planted in the sand, and takes it.

The pressure of his hand is heat and wonder and something possessive, and he curls his fingers around Starrk's like maybe that’s a promise, too.)


End file.
